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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183478">did its people want too much too</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrick_hotstetter/pseuds/patrick_hotstetter'>patrick_hotstetter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Teacher-Student Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:15:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183478</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrick_hotstetter/pseuds/patrick_hotstetter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Derek meets his soulmate when he’s 15. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>Her name is Katie Arian and she’s the substitute teacher for his fourth period English class.</i>
</p><p>or, Derek and Kate might be fated, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kate Argent/Derek Hale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>did its people want too much too</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts">Hecate</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from nobody by mitski</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Derek meets his soulmate when he’s 15. </p><p>Her name is Katie Arian and she’s the substitute teacher for his fourth period English class. </p><p>Mr. Garrett, his previous English teacher, disappeared suddenly. The administration tells the students, who were never all that concerned in the first place, that he took a job at another school. Derek hears later that he was murdered, left in a ditch two states over without his wallet and the back of his head blown open. </p><p>He figures it out after. Everything in retrospect. </p><p>Right now though, he’s locking eyes with Miss Arian for the first time. </p><p>He’s sliding into his seat in the middle row, two desks back, and when he looks up, there she is, beautiful and smiling and standing with her hands on her slim hips. She is highlighted by a perfect ray of midmorning yellowing sunlight.</p><p>He blinks, taken aback, and when he opens his eyes again everything is so bright. Colors come crashing into his awareness like a car smashing into a brick wall. His colors aren’t slow like honey and they don’t bring him a better sense of himself. They don’t fold into the corners of his mind, neat and easy the way romance movies make it out to be. They pinch and shove and bully their way into his world view, his vision overwhelmed and <i>hurting</i> no matter how many times he blinks to reset himself. He inhales, quick and ragged, and exhales hard through his nose. He can <i>hear</i> the colors, everything and everyone deafening in a way that they weren’t before. </p><p>Miss Arian is talking, but Derek can’t hear her. He can’t hear anything at all over the rushing sound in his ears like he’s next to a rapidly flowing river. There’s no way he can focus on the lesson. He looks up at Miss Arian and doesn’t understand how she can. She’s hesitating, trips over herself turning to write on the board, but that’s the only indication that she’s noticed anything strange at all. Noticed him at all. </p><p>Derek’s heart is beating so fast, high up in his chest and bashing itself against his sternum again and again and again. He’s screaming internally, <i>pay attention to me! Notice me!</i> but she’s talking about Charles Dickens instead. </p><p>Derek looks down at his hands, tan and smooth, and they’re shaking. He glances back up and Miss Arian is writing on the board, her handwriting harsh, with long angular lines. Her eyes are large and pale, when she turns around to face the class, and her blouse, open at the throat, is blue. The next time he glimpses his eyes in a mirror, they flash the same color. It makes his skin itch.</p><p>Miss Arian flips her over her shoulder and it’s a dark chestnut brown, curled and so shiny. It reminds him, like a punch to the gut, of Paige. </p><p>His heart is in his throat for the entire lesson, fingers curled around the corners of his desk. He hears the plastic creak, and his neighbors on either side give him funny looks. His control is usually so much better than this, but he can’t help it. He feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin, like he’s going to turn and tear into the people sitting next to him. He’s dangerous and wild the way he’s never wanted to be. The way he knows he can be.</p><p>In front of him, one of his classmates answers a question Derek never even heard and when Miss Arian looks away, her eyes catch on his face, then drop down to his heaving chest. Her lips are pink and they twist into a vicious smirk, but otherwise, she doesn’t acknowledge him. </p><p>Derek doesn’t know what to do when the bell rings. Miss Arian sits at her borrowed desk and flicks through the papers there, tucks her hair behind her ear. She doesn’t look at him, even when he lingers in the doorway, pressed against the jam. </p><p>She doesn’t look up and Derek walks away. He doesn’t know what else to do.</p><p>He wouldn’t want himself as a soulmate either. </p><p>*</p><p>When Derek is 21, he meets Kate Argent. </p><p>He worked out a long time ago that Miss Arian, Katie, wasn’t who she said she was. Knowing that and seeing it are different. The realization of it is crushing.  </p><p>He’s strung up like Christmas lights, wrists and ankles shackled to a grate in his leaking basement. When he concentrates hard he can hear cars, smell trees and rain clouds. He’s hooked up to… something. Something terrible. The air buzzes and crackles, electrified. Dread builds in the hollow of his throat, packs the empty cavities of his body. </p><p>Derek’s shirt is gone. He’s still wearing his jeans, but it isn’t much of a comfort. Even if he were fully dressed, he thinks he would still feel naked right now, the way Katie has always made him feel, open and exposed like a raw nerve. He flexes in his cuffs and doesn’t budge from their hold. </p><p>He’s angry, he’s worried for that kid, for Scott. Kate’s niece, his girlfriend, just left. He’s so worried about him. He’s worried for himself too. He misses his sister. He misses his mom. </p><p>He misses Katie. He always misses Katie.</p><p>“Look at that sour face,” Kate Argent says, flipping his ID card between her fingers. “I bet you have people coming up to you saying, ‘Why don’t you smile more, Derek? You should smile more!’ Don’t you just want to kick those people in the face?” </p><p>Derek grimaces and bites out, “I can think of a few.” </p><p>“Promise?” Kate says, and her smile is sharp like a knife in the back. </p><p>She’s blonde now, but still pretty. She’s older, for sure, but then again so is he. Kate looks at him and something slithery in his guts crawls out, pushes against the confines of his physical body. He feels despair screaming from his pores. </p><p>Kate smells the same as she always has, like metal and lemons. It’s how he knew she was in town in the first place. Part of him wishes she’d hit her mark when she shot him. He wishes she had caught him in the chest, shot him right through the heart. It’s better than he deserves, but he’s always been weak. Selfish. </p><p>Derek’s world is so small now, just him and sometimes the kid. And the Alpha. This is smaller still, just him and Kate and whatever machine she has him strapped to. </p><p>*</p><p>Derek is confused for a long time. Miss Arian tells him he’s smart while they’re in class, talks to him there, offers him sweet smiles, but even when he tries to stay after, she won’t let him. </p><p>Then one day, she does. </p><p>Kate stops him on his way past her desk with her fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding him in place with deceptive strength. Her hair is tied up in a tight bun and her lipstick is red today. The classroom door had been tugged closed behind the next to last student out and she asks, </p><p>“What do you want?” </p><p>Derek opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. People don’t care what he wants, not since Paige. Especially since Paige. He doesn’t know what to say. </p><p>He doesn’t know what he wants. </p><p>He knows exactly what he wants. </p><p>Nothing comes out. </p><p>Miss Arian loosens her grip on his wrist, slides her fingers down until they’re tucked into his, between his. They’re holding hands. Something like electricity surges up his arm at the contact. He buzzes with it. His hands are quaking and the pit of his stomach gapes open, starving. He wants so much. </p><p>“You know why we can’t talk about it, right?” Miss Arian tells him, under her breath even though they’re alone. She squeezes her hand in his. </p><p>Derek answers, matching her volume, whispering, “you won’t be my teacher forever, Miss Arian.” He smiles and hopes he looks charming. </p><p>Miss Arian bites her lip and glances at her closed classroom door. “Call me Katie,” she says. </p><p>“Okay,” Derek says. “Okay, Katie.” </p><p>*</p><p>“Are you going to torture me,” Derek says. “Or are you just going to talk me to death?”</p><p>Kate turns away from him, shows him her back. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t want to torture you. I just… want to catch up. Remember all the fun we used to have together?” Kate asks, giggling. </p><p>“Like the time you burned my family alive?” he asks.</p><p>Her smile is manic, when she swings back around, and it makes the shadows falling over her face violent. She is violent, something jagged and unrefined. She is and isn’t the woman he fell in love with when he was a boy. She shines in the darkness, but it’s not sunlight, it’s a house fire. Derek swallows his anger and it sits heavy in his bones. </p><p>“No, I was thinking more about the hot, crazy sex we had.” She trails her fingers over his belly, along the jut of his hip. They’re cold and the muscles under her touch tremble. No one has touched Derek since Katie and even though it hurts, he wants more. He always wants more with her. </p><p>“But the fire thing-- yeah, that was fun too!” Kate laughs and it’s mean, tinkling and cruel. He serges forward, but his bindings hold him back. He knows if they didn’t, he would tear her apart. </p><p>“I love,” she says. “How much you hate me.” </p><p>*</p><p>Katie’s apartment is stark, which he doesn’t expect. She’s such a bright woman, glittering and vibrant. He thought she would have knickknacks and overstuffed furniture. Instead, she has empty shelves and a bottle of vodka on her coffee table, two cinder blocks with a wooden board on top. Derek didn’t think people lived like this in real life. </p><p>She takes his backpack and hangs it on a hook over the back of the door. Derek watches her, hands tucked nervously into his pockets. When she turns around, she unbuttons the top button of her blouse and rips her hair out of her ponytail at the same time. It’s dazzling, her soft curls falling over her shoulders and her collarbones peaking out at him. Derek licks his lips. </p><p>Katie runs her fingers through her hair and it falls in waves down her back. She catches him looking, smirks at him and leans into his space. Her face shifts and she’s smiling up at him. Her mouth is so pink, it makes his blood sing out under his skin. </p><p>Katie hooks her fingers into Derek’s belt loops, pulls him in and presses her chest against his. She tilts her head up and Derek’s stomach drops and lands on the tops of his sneakers. She’s so beautiful and small and when he brings his arms up around her shoulders, she burrows in. </p><p>Later, laying in her bed, a mattress on top of a box spring on the floor of her bedroom, she wraps herself around him, blankets his body with hers. He kisses her, her mouth and then her cheeks. She’s flushed, red staining her pale skin and spreading down the long line of her neck. </p><p>Derek runs his hands through her hair, brushes it back from her face. It smells like chemicals and it tickles his nose unpleasantly. He ignores it then, but later when he learns what hair dye smells like, he realizes she was never a brunette. All that long, lustrous dark hair reminded him of Paige for a reason and he feels sick all over when he realizes. </p><p>She rests her chin on his sternum and blinks at him through hooded eyes. He’s so in love he could burst with it. </p><p>“I wish things were different,” she whispers, and Derek agrees. He cups her face in his larger hands and caresses the curve of her cheekbone with his thumb. Katie nuzzles into the palm of his hand, her eyes squeezed shut like she’s in pain.</p><p>He can’t stay the night, and before he goes, he takes a long shower. He doesn’t say why and she doesn’t ask. </p><p>*</p><p>“Do you remember this?” Kate asks him, and tucks her hands into the waistband of his jeans. She dips her head down and licks a stripe up his stomach. The feeling of her wet tongue makes him ache, roils in his gut and leaves him desolate and too full in the same breath.  </p><p>Derek deserves this, he knows. There isn’t anyone in the world anymore who would disagree with him, now that Laura is gone. </p><p>He isn’t sure she believed it either, but she’d said it enough that he thinks maybe he’d been starting to believe it too. </p><p>He knows now that he was wrong, that he deserves what he’s getting. Deserves the shocks and the pain and the torment. He can take it all and he wants it all. That Katie— that Kate— gives it to him, well… that’s just fitting, isn’t it? </p><p>He’s so miserable he could burst with it. </p><p>Kate is the worst thing that ever happened to Derek. </p><p>But the thing is, Derek is the worst thing that ever happened to Katie too. </p><p>*</p><p>“I wish we could see each other more,” Katie says on a different day, months later, and Derek wishes that too. </p><p>She asks if she can visit him at night, when his parents have gone to bed. If they could spend time together now they way they will when he’s grown up. She runs her fingers over the hair at the nape of his neck, fingernails scraping through the shorthairs there. He feels warm and syrupy sweet, sticky and clingy. He pulls her in for a hug, her sheets getting tangled around their naked legs. He buries his face in the crook of her neck, breathes in her lemony scent, nostrils flaring. </p><p>Derek tells her about the old tunnels from the reserve to his house. He never says he’s a wolf. He never says the words. As far as he knows, Katie has no idea. Why would she? </p><p>He doesn’t think about why he doesn’t tell her. He doesn’t. He doesn’t tell her for probably the same reason he doesn’t like to think about Paige at all, the way the light faded from her eyes. The way he held her shaking body as she died. </p><p>He wants to live in this moment for a little while longer, this point in time where he is happy with Katie before she hates him as much as everyone else does. Before she looks at him the way he looks at himself. </p><p>There should be no reason that his family has secret tunnels to and from their property. It’s so strange that they do. Katie doesn’t blink though. She smiles and it crinkles the skin around the corner of her eyes so sweetly. Derek bites his lip and blushes.</p><p>He’s nervous, the hair on his arms stuck up in warning. Something isn’t right, but Derek is distracted. He’s distracted by the weak rays of sunshine pouring into Katie’s bedroom window through the Vinecian blinds, they way they pool over her skin, painting her yellow. Dark shadows fall over her face. </p><p>She brushes her fingers over his bottom lip and presses over the intent his teeth left behind. </p><p>*</p><p>The light in his basement is harsh and yellow. It shrouds the room with shadows, coaxes the ghosts there out of their hiding places in the back of his mind. He would give anything for the lamp light reflecting in the puddles of water under their feet to glare back at him white. He looks at the blue hue in the stones and sees his own mistakes staring back at him, sees that yellow lamp light and remembers the way Katie had looked stretched out in it that last day before she murdered his family. </p><p>This moment superimposes itself over the softness of when she was still Katie. Before she burned his family alive in this room, in this house. Kate, sparkling like a forest fire in this sickly yellow glow grows large in his mind, overtakes the person he still thinks about when he can’t help himself, when his control slips. When he misses her despite what she’s done, who she is. </p><p>Kate looks at him now like he is a problem to solve, a bug she forgot to stomp out. Not for the first time he thinks about her and knows that if this is his soulmate, then this is something he is too. </p><p>There is no happy ending for him. There is only justice for what he has done, for the people who are dead because something inside of him can’t stop devouring them. There is only this basement, forever. </p><p>Just two monsters bathed in yellow light.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you’ve enjoyed this fic and that it scratched an itch. </p><p>Thank you as always to a special gc and to my roommates who were forced to watch so many episodes of teen wolf as part of my ~process.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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